


I Could Not Stop For Death

by LullabyKnell



Series: LullabyKnell and the Harry Potter Fics [11]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Attempted Murder, Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Goblet of Fire AU, Horror, Murder, Temporary Character Death, Temporary child death, Universe Alteration, attempted child murder
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2018-08-28 08:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8438497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LullabyKnell/pseuds/LullabyKnell
Summary: Goblet of Fire AU: Something Lily Evans did made her son immune to the Killing Curse. There's still no defense or counter-curse, it's just that it doesn't work on him, as he finds out when events go a different way in the graveyard of Little Hangleton. He's only the Boy-Who-Lived, after all, because he should be dead.





	1. Let the Thing Be Destroyed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DeiStarr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeiStarr/gifts).



> Happy Halloween, friends! Do not fret, I am here to give you some _horrible_ angst and horror and murder! Okay, but seriously, I'm not kidding about that. This fic is not fluffy or happy or nice. This fic was born out of the darker parts of the series, as well as me wondering (at the prompting of someone commenting on how badass Harry seems to an objective person given everything he's done and has had happen to him) how exactly Harry survived the Killing Curse and how horribly frightening that would be to the wizarding world, especially Voldemort. Because, you know, the child you've just killed _isn't supposed to get up again of his own powers_. That must have _terrified_ Voldemort. So just... this fic is probably going to have a happy/fluffy ending bc I'm soft, but the beginning and premise are horrifying, fyi. 
> 
> **!WARNING!** This fic's first chapter (slash prologue of sorts) opens with a scene from October 31st, 1981. Meaning that it opens with the detailed and explicit murder of Lily Evans. If you don't think you'll be able to stomach that, then... maybe go to another fic. [Go read some fluffy GOF AU, please. I have some here for you.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8274067)

At the flick of a yew wand, the locked door swung soundlessly open.

 Perhaps, if his pale skin had not slowly been turning hard and scaled and brittle with inhumanity, he would have felt the rush of warm air that seeped from the nursery. Perhaps, if his dark red eyes were not charged with a most vicious act of murder, he would have seen the brightness clinging to the room despite the darkness of the night. As it was, he did not. 

 Lily Evans turned around, dark red hair wreathing her head with a crackle of tingling static. Her pupils were mere pinpricks against her vivid green eyes, which widened on her starkly greyed face as she took sight of the monster in the doorway. She was leaning heavily against the crib in the middle of the room, trembling with the effort to stay upright and strong. Her ragged breath was the only sound in the room, far louder than the gentle sough outside the window.

 Tom Riddle, swathed in rich black from hem to hood, stepped into the room and raised his white wand with satisfied conviction towards her chest. Cruel red eyes met desperate green, and the beginnings of a smile curved around his seared lips.

 If it were possible, Lily’s bright eyes became even wider. She flung herself wholly around, arms spread and chest open, and stood shakingly between Riddle and the crib – unarmed and desperate.

 “No,” she said hoarsely, and then louder: “Not Harry.”

 “Stand aside,” Riddle commanded.

 “NO. Not Harry!”

 Lily’s voice increased sharply in volume and pitch, until she was screaming at the top of her lungs.

 “Not Harry, not Harry!”

 The sound was jagged, excruciating, against the quiet.

 “Please not Harry!”

 Her face was ugly with tears and she could barely stay on her feet.  

 “Stand aside, you silly girl… stand aside, now…”

 There was no wavering of the yew wand. Riddle’s inhumanly edged face was now twisted with impatience, upset with disgust, annoyed at having his murderous high interrupted. He took another step forward, into the grating screams, grip tight and ready.

 “Not Harry, please no,” Lily begged. Her back slumped against the crib, elbows and arms the only thing keeping her upright as Riddle advanced. “Take me,” she offered desperately. “Kill me instead!”

 Something that might have been laughter bubbled from Riddle’s lips, shrill and distorted almost beyond all recognition. The offer amused him somehow and his dark red eyes welled with malicious mirth. He looked down on the woman before him with delighted pity.

 “Not Harry! Please… have mercy… haVE MERCY…”

 Lily Evans screamed and Tom Riddle shrieked with laughter. The tangled sounds echoed through the nursery, down the hall and the stairs, and all throughout the cottage. And underneath the horror of noise, a hitched sort of sobbing began – the quiet and confused crying of a small child.

 “Stand aside,” Riddle said, for the third and last time.

 The noise that Lily Evans made was not a natural sounding noise. Through heaving lungs and brimming tears, Lily _screamed_ her refusal. It was the word ‘No’, but scraped raw and raked shrill and twisted beyond speech and human sound. It was a sob, a snarl, pure fury, pure fear – a scream that could have become the making of a myth if there were witnesses to this scene.

 It was a sound so terrible that even Tom Riddle had to pause at the banshee scream.

 When the woman before him ran out of breath, she tried to heave in air and choked on it. Sputtering and shaking, Lily struggled for breath before a monster. She hacked and gasped and shuddered. And all the while, through streams of tears, she kept her bright green eyes fixed on him in an unbreaking stare.

 “K… Kill me instead,” she said, voice wasted.

 Riddle stared and then once more laughed his terrible, twisted laugh.

 “So be it,” he said.

 Perhaps, if his measure of a witch had not begun and ended with her as a thing to possess, he would have noticed the way the shadows darkened and the brightness subtly surged, throwing the room into a sharp and unnatural contrast. Perhaps, if Tom Riddle’s focus were not so wholly on the vanquished prophecy and seventh piece of his path in such close reach before him, he would have seen how, in the blink of an eye, the nursery rose and swallowed these three careless words.

Perhaps, if he had not already accepted his long-awaited victory before it was his, he would have seen how the nursery finally fell into the proper, natural darkness of a bedroom at night. There was so much he might have noticed, from the sudden lack of warmth to the quiet banishment of the itch in the air, if only his hairy heart was not increasing in beat with greedy anticipation.

 The words settled around them, swallowed by the warmth and brightness occupying the nursery as the nursery swallowed it. _So be it._ The room was quiet and dark with acceptance of the statement.

 Lily Evans struggled to be fully upright once more, ignoring the whimpers behind her, trying to stand tall.

 Tom Riddle did not wait for her; he raised his wand and howled, “ _AVADA KEDAVRA!_ ”

 The terrible green light struck her in the centre of the chest. Lily Evans, still trying to push herself high as it struck, simply crumpled to the floor. There was no pause, no seizure of limbs, no space between breaths. Lily Evans simply collapsed like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

 Her limbs fell at awkward angles – no longer trembling, but perfectly, eerily still. Her dark red hair spilled over the floor, limp and tangled. Her expression was unremarkable, but her eyes were still open and now strangely dulled, as though a light had gone out behind them. As though something had been turned off inside. 

 Standing over the corpse, Riddle’s red eyes gleamed with a new rush of cruel victory. He stared, clearly savouring the moment, but he did not stare for long before turning an impatient look towards the soft crying in the crib. Riddle stepped forward, over the fallen body of the mother, and let his wand next fall down on the sobbing child inside with more satisfied conviction and premature victory. He allowed for one moment to give the child a look of pity and disgust, but no longer.

 “ _Avada Kevadra!_ ” Riddle cast again.

 Ghastly green light surged from the yew wand, only inches from the crying child’s forehead.

 There was no pause, no space between breaths, not even a split-second to blink before the Death Curse reared and turned itself on its caster. The nursery _surged._ Green light shone bright as day and the shadows were their darkest yet, and both sides of the sharp contrast pounced on Tom Riddle and tore into his seared white skin. The air, suddenly hot and crackling with destruction, rushed forward and ripped into his dark red eyes.

 Tom Riddle screamed, alight with pain and green light, blinded and crumbling piece by piece into green-burnt ash and crackling dust. His limbs fell apart beneath him, collapsing inward, disintegrating. Tom Riddle screamed as his own spell undid what had become of him, destroyed the human-shaped shell beyond twisted by Dark rituals and crueller, even greedier acts. His black robes broiled around him, as green light and promised shadows pushed him to his breaking knees and seared him clean.

 A yew wand clattered to the floor, fallen through withering fingers.

The noise that Tom Riddle made died with a broken gurgle, fading into a terrified whine, before being cut off with a final crackle. All, by then, that was left of him was a scorch-like smear and dust on the floor with a dissipating greenish glow. The only sound left was the gentle rustling from outside the window.

 Then, after several minutes, small lungs taking in a deep gasp. And then there was a pained wail from the child in the crib, surprised and hurt.

 Around them, the nursery had settled with only the faintest of buzzes, one to be felt rather than heard, as the green light had faded and the shadows had softened back into the rest of the dark room – and as the heat in the air had drifted off and left a slight chill in its wake. Quiet normalcy had returned to the terrible scene, and stayed there as the child in the crib wailed out anew to an emptied house, blood dribbling down from a fresh lightning-shaped cut on their forehead.

Harry Potter howled, not knowing what had just happened, not knowing that he would be famous for a deed he had not done and would not remember. He could not know that this very moment was just the beginning of the boy who lived.


	2. Priori Incantatem

Harry felt his feet slam into the ground and his injured leg didn’t even buckle, but immediately gave way; he fell forward, letting go of the Triwizard Cup at last, onto hard ground and ragged grass. It hurt, in that dull and breathless way that would be worst felt later. He raised his head quickly, though, peering through gloom for the possibility of immediate danger.

 They were surrounded no longer by high hedges, but by large stones that were carved and… oh. The stones were carved with names and dates, arranged in rows in a poorly tended yard. It was a graveyard; they were in a graveyard.

 “Where… are we?” he said.

 Beside him, fallen and yet hovering slightly over him, Cedric shook his head. He too was peering around the dark graveyard, now frowning fiercely, his dark brows furrowed in clear confusion. He got up warily, wand at the ready. Nothing leapt out from among the quiet stones, so Cedric reached down and pulled Harry to his feet, steadying him when Harry’s injured leg wobbled beneath him.

 Once Harry was steady, mostly on one leg, Cedric stepped away, and they looked around.

 The Portkey had whisked them miles away, perhaps hundreds of miles away, because even the mountains that surrounded the Hogwarts castle and grounds were gone from the horizon. Beyond the dark and overgrown graveyard, the space devolved mostly into trees and shadows, all visibly still and not even creaking with faint sounds of the night. There was the black outline of what might have been small church a ways away, past the large yew tree to their right, and the distant silhouette of a grand manor on a hill past that.

 It was a far cry from the hedges and dangers of the maze. Harry could not make sense of where they were or what they were supposed to do. None of the other tasks had had a second component; this was supposed to be the last one.

 Beside him, Cedric seemed to have the same train of thought. His brow furrowed and his nose wrinkled with confusion; he looked down at the Triwizard Cup and then up at Harry.

 “Did anyone tell _you_ the cup was a Portkey?”

 “Nope,” Harry said, still looking around, as though his eyes might adjust and somehow make the graveyard less eerie. “D’you think this is supposed to be part of the task?”

 “I dunno,” Cedric said. He looked slightly nervous, now that he’d seen there weren’t any answers to glean from their shadowy surroundings.

 “What if… what if this is because we tied?” Harry wondered, a wobbling horror growing in his chest to match his one-legged stance and aching bad leg. Had his insistence that they both take the cup somehow made this happen? Had their attempt at tying this only extended the task and tournament further?

 Cedric’s nose wrinkled again as he considered the idea. “I… don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t think you can do that with Portkeys.” Then his face settled into another determined, almost scowling expression as he said, “If it was, then I forfeit.”

 He was trembling, Harry noticed, very faintly and interspersed with infrequent but involuntary twitches. Underneath the shadows and the stubborn expression, Cedric looked grey and exhausted; he had not recovered from Krum’s Cruciatus curse earlier, Harry realized. The mere memory of Cedric seizing in agony on the ground made him feel sick, it was hard to blame Cedric for just wanting this over.

 “No,” Harry said, wobbling where he stood. “I can’t even _walk_ and you got there first anyway.”

 Cedric grinned, but it was forced. “We’ve done this before,” he pointed out ruefully, before he sighed and once more looked around the eerily still and silent graveyard. “Do you think sending up red sparks now will actually do anything?”

 “…It might be worth a try,” Harry said, “but…”

 How could they know what was out there? In the shadows and the church and the trees?

 Perhaps Cedric was thinking about the same lines, because his nervous expression seemed to agree. “Well, wands out and up, anyway,” he said, raising his own a little readily higher. Harry did the same, just in case. “Where do you think we are?”

  “I dunno,” Harry said. He had never seen this place before in his… “Wait.”

 Cedric looked at him. “What?”

 Harry tried to stagger forward several steps – caught up in the dream of a memory, or perhaps the memory of a dream – hissing in pain and wobbling violently as he put weight on his bad leg again. Cedric lurched forward to grab his arm, but Harry shook him off, trembling with a feeling of familiarity and dread that did not originally belong to him.

 “I… I might… I think I know…. this place?” Harry said. “I saw…”

 “A tournament clue?”

 “No. No, it was in a… dream… I think. Maybe.”

 Harry leg ached fiercely, but he could not ignore the half-remembered sensations crawling over his skin: prickles of strange scents, whispers of slurred and warped speech, and moans of curving through the thick grass and over cool stone. Someone else’s staggered footsteps in the night echoed through him, over a hush of conspiring whispers and a burn of strange light.

 “…A dream,” Cedric repeated, a few steps behind him. He sounded sceptical and confused.

 “Yes,” Harry said, overcome with the feeling that they were being watched. “I… Someone’s coming,” he said suddenly, unexpected to his own ears.

 And then the half-remembered dream slipped away, out of reach once more. 

 Harry turned and Cedric followed his gaze, squinting tensely through the darkness, in the direction of the manor on the hill. There was movement in the shadows. He first saw an outline, and then a figure was there and drawing nearer, steadily picking their way toward them between the graves. They were short and stout, wearing a hooded cloak to obscure the face it was too dark to see, and hunched over something held in its arms. It looked like a baby, Harry thought as the gap closed between them and the figure, or maybe just a bundle of robes.

 He glanced sideways and exchanged a confused look with Cedric. This didn’t seem like a part of the tournament; it was nothing like any of the tasks and the figure didn’t look like some sort of official.

 Cedric seemed to come to a decision, looking at the short figure, and opened his mouth to speak.

 Harry’s scar instantly exploded with pain, without warning, and the world fell away to the worst agony he had ever felt in his life. From far away, there was a hand reaching to him, someone shouting, but he was lost in the searing pain. His head felt like it was splitting open, his unseeing eyes were burning, his skin was blistering; and his wand slipped from between his fingers as his stinging hands reached up to claw at the throbbing in his forehead. His knees buckled, legs failing beneath him. In the next burn of agony, he would surely collapse to the ground and die.

 And yet… there was another flash of sudden certainty… of inexplicable knowing. Beside his mind-searing pain, there was a charge of pleasure… a rush of cruel victory… a spark of malicious delight at a most vicious act of murder. Harry knew the words next said as though they were off his own tongue.

 “ _Kill the spare,_ ” a high, cold voice said in a carrying whisper.

 Harry lurched as he fell, towards the hand and the shouting reaching for him, as a swishing noise split the air. He shoved as hard as he could, retching as the pain hit a pitch beyond anything he ever could have imagined, falling forcefully and purposefully into something solid just after a second voice screeched the words to the night:

 “ _Avada Kedavra!_ ”

 A blast of green light blazed through Harry’s stinging eyelids and everything was gone.

 

 The corpse of Harry Potter lay limp and still and alone in the grass of the dark and overgrown graveyard. His limbs had fallen at awkward angles, no care given for his injured leg or the glasses pressed awkwardly against his face. His eyes were closed, having been pressed shut in terrible agony, and his expression was slightly pained. A new lightning bolt scar had been carved into his face, drawn over his cheek and the underside of his jaw, and pinpricks of blood dribbled down his neck. Save for the stillness of his back and the silence and the cut, he appeared much like a child who had managed to fall asleep in the wrong place, in between breaths.

 For several heartbeats, for a moment that contained an eternity, it was all the short man in the cloak could do to stare in disbelieving horror. The bundle in his arms was silent. There was no sound in the graveyard, none at all, even breathing would have been deafening, and the moment of realization seemed to last forever.

 The Boy-Who-Lived was dead.

 A deep feeling of rage began to stir in the silence, as the being in the bundle of robes realized what had happened. It was such a righteous fury that the air around it seemed to saturate with unhappiness, enough to make the short man tremble fiercely, as though suddenly bearing the greatest and most terrifying of weights. There was a rasping hiss from the bundle – a breath that would surely became rage made words – and a choked stutter as the servant’s fear twisted his apologies in his throat.

 But before a word could leave either of their lips, the graveyard made itself heard. Not in the way of words or sounds, but in the way of overwhelming and irrevocable power. If the greater forces of the universe were suddenly asked to read words recorded by human hands, its voice would have come into being as it now did.

 The graveyard _surged._ Apparently apropos of nothing. As brief as flashing lightning, ghastly green light illuminated the graveyard, throwing the world into unnatural brightness and dark shadow. As sharp and hot as flashing lightning, the air crackled and prickled with heat and power, itching and burning over skin and grass and stone. The unnatural sear of it was nigh unbearable, only its split second lifespan and its focus on the small body prevented more than a shock of undoing agony through the air and witnesses.

 The moment was over as soon and suddenly as it had come; the eternal second ended. The ghastly light dissipated into the air, drifting off into non-existence, leaving not even a glow. The heat in the air vanished, as though blown away by a wind that wasn’t there, leaving a slight chill in its wake. The itch and buzz over skin died, and the graveyard settled, softening back into its eerie dark and silence. Quiet, haunting normalcy returned to the terrible scene and stayed.

 A dropped pin would have crashed like thunder in the silence, as the short man stared all around him but particularly at the dead boy before him, his own breath and pounding heartbeat drowning all the thoughts in his head. Even the bundle in his arms was silent, as though at a genuine loss for words at this happening of unnatural things.

 Then, after a few beats, the corpse took in a deep gasp. Its lips parted and its cheeks stretched with the need for air, pulling at the new lightning bolt scar carved into its left cheek and the underside of its jaw, more tears of blood dribbling down his face. The chest swelled and the back arched, and then the corpse broke into heavy, painful coughs that wracked at its shoulders and throat.

 Once the coughing had mostly subsided, the corpse fell back against the grass, wheezing for air and trembling fiercely, shaking with pain and shock, curling in on itself. It retched, several times, and the ghastly green light still burned into the small man’s eyelids made it look as though the corpse was coughing out the remnants of a rejected curse. And once the retching had mostly subsided, with one more ragged wheeze, the corpse’s eyes fluttered open.

 For a moment, they seemed blank and expressionless, though wet with tears of pain. But only for a moment, and then the bright green eyes focused slightly – as though the windows of a house were lighting up; as though a switch had been flicked on inside. The corpse’s eyes were slightly glazed, confused and disbelieving, and likely half-blinded with tears, but without doubt, unquestionably alive.

 The short man stared, numb with disbelief, unable to accept what he was seeing. The bundle in his arms was silent as well, listening to the shuddering breaths of the undead boy before them, a growing feeling emanating from them that was too much to name in a single word. There was shock and confusion, of course, but also a surely rising wave of frustration and rage, tinged with something that perhaps, just _perhaps,_ might have been genuine fear.

 Harry Potter blinked and shuddered, pushing himself into a sitting position and look half-blindly around him, clearly exhausted, in pain, and in shock. He seemed to have no understanding of what had just happened either. He raised a hand to his face, numbly, smearing the blood of his new scar as he tried to clear his sight and fix the skew of his glasses.

 “ _The ritual,_ ” the bundle finally hissed. “Bring him. _Now._ ”


	3. Portus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I... guess I lost a lot of inspiration for this fic, though I've been meaning to continue it for a long, long time. I didn't manage to work on it again until I saw the suggestion of Harry Potter written in the style of Lemony Snicket. This is not the Lemony Snicket style, but it is... inspired by it, I'd say. (I haven't read the books in a long time.) So... prepare for a massive tone switch from the previous two chapters.

 Dear readers, I am afraid that at this point in the story we must take a moment to collect ourselves and change tracks. If this were a nicer sort of story, this would be the point where I apologize for telling such a terrible and heartbreaking story, and for leaving previous readers hanging on a figurative cliff besides, and begin telling a much happier story that has no such pitfalls. Unfortunately, this isn’t that sort of story, and I can only compliment one and all for the admirable display of figurative upper-arm strength as I regretfully leave you still figuratively hanging from a figurative cliff.

 You have many questions, I understand. What is it that Lily Evans did to protect her son on that terrible night? What effects did her actions bestow on her apparently now immortal son? In this terrible mix of mutilated souls and unbreakable oaths, where exactly do the lines of mortality and pieces of magic fall? Does it, in fact, hurt poor young Harry to die again and again?

 Dear readers, I am afraid that these are questions that I cannot share the answers to. These secrets are in the possession of those more directly involved in the story. Should one manage to follow Lily Evans down the irreversible path of sacrifice, or should one manage to follow Tom Riddle into the fragmented holding of limbo, or should one manage to be invited over to Harry Potter’s house for tea, they might be able ask for the great and terrible truth of it all. But I would not advise it; firstly as any of these three tasks would be equally nearly impossible to manage; and secondly, as a most terrible, haunting, and indescribably horrible thing happens to the people who ask questions.

 They get answers. And you know, quite frankly, it serves them right.

 You have more questions, still, I understand, of a less impossible nature. What has become of poor Cedric Diggory, who has apparently vanished from the scene? What will become of poor Harry Potter, trapped in a graveyard with murderous wizards, on the cusp of Lord Voldemort’s return? What will become of the known path forward now that Tom Riddle and Peter Pettigrew have both witnessed Harry’s immunity to an all-killing curse?

 Dear readers, I am afraid that to continue this story, we must leave the graveyard and poor Harry Potter entirely for the moment. We must instead focus on that first question, as I now reveal to you where Cedric Diggory had gone and what became of him, and answer as well some questions you neither knew you had nor knew you would have. Saving the day, it may surprise some of you, sometimes happens without needing to be pulled up every step by young Harry Potter. Frankly, most of the time, it is Harry Potter who needs saving and long since time he didn’t have to be in these horrible situations where he ought to be saved, much less keep doing it himself.

 Do not fret yourselves, dear readers, as the story continues you will have answers. Perhaps not the answers you wanted or answers even corresponding the questions you asked, but answers nonetheless, and, quite frankly, for reading such a ghastly story as entertainment, it will serve you right.

 

 In the small stands around the entrance to the deadly maze grown on Hogwarts’ Quidditch pitch, a young girl rubbed her hands together and blew on them. Early June evenings were generally much warmer than their winter counterparts, but this one still had some spring chill to dredge up for the settling dark, and there was a cool, piercing breeze stirring from somewhere out in the woods.

 This young girl was thirteen years old, the age where being called a child is now a grievous insult, just old enough to begin to puzzle the problems of life and young enough to have no one listen to you. She scowled at the maze before her, but also more specifically at unfairness of everything, as she often did. She would have much preferred to be reading a book indoors instead of waiting around in the cold, watching a bunch of bushes for some ridiculous contest that, in her esteemed opinion, made no sense and was a fantastic waste of time.

 Her name was Tina, and she often thought anything that wasn’t reading a book indoors made no sense and was a fantastic waste of time. Things like Quidditch matches were, in her mind, always dull and often cold, and made for the best time for reading indoors, because everyone else had left and things were quiet for once. The only thing that Tina liked better than going home, the role of which was currently being played by her dorm room, was never leaving in the first place.

 Unfortunately, Tina had made the mistake of promising a friend that she would attend, in _full,_ at least _one_ of the Triwizard Tournament’s tasks. Unfortunately, she had put off doing so for so long that now there was only one task left, and it seemed to consist of staring at a hedge. She wasn’t impressed.

 The important thing to know about Tina was that she didn’t believe anything she heard. She could have been a professional sceptic, if such a career existed. She had heard many things during her time at Hogwarts, about trolls and basilisks and dementors and Quidditch-related accidents, most of them somehow involving Harry Potter, and she had stubbornly believed none of them. It took skill to be as disbelieving as Tina, and perhaps the safe, sheltered childhood with responsible, sensible, capable adults had something to do with it as well. If she had ever seen one of Harry Potter’s Quidditch matches, or seen Sirius Black herself, or seen a Ford Anglia crash into the Whomping Willow, she would have been very surprised and have gained a very different outlook on life.

 She wasn’t surprised when a Portkey flashed and Cedric Diggory fell onto the lawn in front of the maze. She was relieved, because now she could finally return to her book and her friend wasn’t allowed to ask her to another crowded event for at least a year.

 Tina was surprised, however, that Cedric Diggory didn’t seem particularly happy about winning. He was covered in dirt and he had leaves in his hair, and he was talking quite loudly about a graveyard and Harry Potter and a secret Portkey location and _Harry Potter jumping in front of a Killing Curse for him._ He was yelling about the back of his shirt getting snagged on the Portkey and Harry Potter having been kidnapped or killed, while the teachers and his father tried their best to shush him.

 Unfortunately for them, Cedric Diggory, getting louder and more insistent by the second, was not in a mood to be shushed. Everyone in the stands heard quite clearly that something had gone terribly wrong, Tina the third-year among them.

 Truthfully, there is very little that need be known about Tina. Who she is and why she was there isn’t especially important. What is important is what she did, because she did something incredible that night, something unexpected and practically unheard of, something that no one else there might have considered as a course of action until much later. But Tina Palmsee did it immediately, without consulting anyone, and in doing so most likely saved Harry Potter’s unhappily ambiguous life.

 She panicked and called the Aurors.

 

 The Aurors arrived within minutes, while the teachers were still trying to keep the students calm and get a straight story out of Cedric Diggory. The general consensus among teachers was that something in the maze had caused the boy to hallucinate, and Harry Potter was still somewhere inside. The headmasters and professors were about to decide who to send to look for the other boy when half-a-dozen witches and wizards in red robes strode out onto the lawn.

 Chief among them were a large, bearded man and a short-haired woman with a scarred face. They were both tall, brown-skinned, dark-haired, and in their forties, and they were both clearly in charge. They were Mike and Elena Palmsee, Tina’s father and paternal aunt respectively. Ludo Bagman had already vanished, so it was Percy Weasley who greeted them and, despite having no idea how they’d known to come, he thanked them loudly for coming so quickly.

 There were many interesting individuals among the Aurors there, but one of them was especially notable, arriving on the scene much earlier than more commonly known series of events intended for her. She was a witch with extremely fluffy, bubble-gum pink hair and a sly sort of face, at least most of the time. And the first thing she did was brightly greet one of the Hogwarts teachers, an infamous old buzzard who had been one of her favourite ex-mentors, because she hadn’t seen him since his retirement.  

 While there is much to know about this witch, who is both very interesting and very important, what is more important is what she did next. Because she did something incredible that night, something unexpected and practically unheard of, something that no one else there might have considered as a course of action until much later, because none of them had realized in nearly a year what she realized in less than thirty seconds. 

 But Nymphadora Tonks did it immediately, without consulting anyone, and in doing so most likely saved Harry Potter’s gruesomely vague life. In the moment and later, the teachers would be horrified, but generally, the student body would agree that the next thing that Nymphadora Tonks did had been _awesome._

 She punched Barty Crouch Jr. in the face. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Palmsees are OCs of mine from [into the arena with your head held high.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4472270/chapters/10164680)


End file.
